TestingOutTheTest

Servii said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

Oh. You’re a r/moviescirclejerk user. That explains a lot.

Oh. You’re a /r/saltierthancrait user. That explains a lot.

I browse a lot of subreddits, especially Star Wars ones. STC is one of them, yes. (I do apologize for the r/moviescirclejerk comment. That came off as needlessly mean.)

Look, you’re forgetting the main problem of all this. Palpatine came back. He was back for 30 years.

I’m saying Palpatine didn’t reclaim the galaxy in the ST.

The Empire came back in full force, so much so that they were even more advanced and deadly than before, as you admitted. Our heroes didn’t prevent anything.

They prevented the complete takeover in TROS.

They failed offscreen, and so the new heroes were forced to come in and clean up the old heroes’ mess.

And yet the OT heroes DO overcome their failures. Luke becomes the legend he was meant to be and allows the galaxy to rise up on Exegol and defeat the FO across the galaxy. The Republic is inherently flawed, so the galaxy cooperates in TROS.

The OT heroes, despite having succeeded onscreen during the OT, left behind a legacy of failure and abandonment. It’s not comparable to the PT, since the PT actually ended in tragedy, so it made sense for Obi-Wan and Yoda to look to the new generation to make right their mistakes and not repeat those failures. The OT then shows us the heroes succeeding, but the New Canon has everything get shot to hell just for the sake of setting up the ST. Now, the OT heroes have been retroactively demoted to being just the stepping stones for the “real” heroes of the ST.

All victory is temporary, this is true. The problem is allowing that victory to be completely scrubbed away through in-universe negligence and incompetence. By TRoS, there was nothing left of the OT heroes’ victory to be preserved. Therefore, the ST is not a story of preserving and preventing. It’s a story of the “real” heroes cleaning up after the previous ones, who were made foolish and incompetent to serve this newfangled story.

And? What’s wrong with paving the way for new heroes?

Why did the Republic fund the Resistance in secret? Why were the two factions seemingly estranged from one another? If there’s a resurgent Empire, clearly with malicious intent, that’s encroaching on Republic territory, kidnapping children to be soldiers, and building a massive, very conspicuous planet killer, then I think at least a small self defense military is justified. In fact, as long as the Empire still existed as a faction, even when they fled into deep space to regroup as the First Order, the Republic still should obviously had held onto some basic military force. You don’t lay down your weapons while the Empire is still out there gathering strength. That’s idiotic.

Reread my point: “It’s just that they refused to militarize because they became the Empire because they militarized in AotC. Remember, they had no military before AotC. They inferred that demilitarizing would make sure they never become another Empire.”

Not to mention the Resistance is tiny, even measlier than the Rebel Alliance, despite being initially funded and supported by the dominant government of the galaxy. Why is that?

I never said they were funded.

Except the movie DOES explain his return. He simply transferred his consciousness into a clone. It’s implied by “I have died before”, and the fact alone that he survived IMPLIES he’s discovered the secret to cheating death >that only one has achieved.

That’s not an explanation. “I have died before” and him being alive explain nothing.

Dude, they imply he’s survived death in ROTJ, backed by ROTJ literally showing us that he did blow up twice.

And besides, the immortality sought by Plagueis wasn’t possessing clones. It was maintaining life in a single body.

Do you really think “To cheat death is an ability only one had achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret” referred to Plagueis?

Jakku is a desert planet to visualize the hell Rey’s going through.

No, it’s not. It’s a desert planet because, in JJ’s mind, Star Wars protagonists are supposed to always come from desert planets, because reasons.

Stories tend to convey unintended meaning all the time.

Oh. You’re a r/moviescirclejerk user. That explains a lot.

Oh. You’re a /r/saltierthancrait user. That explains a lot.

Servii said:

Having Thrawn would’ve made the ST disconnect from the PT and OT, unlike Palpatine. Stopping Palps’ return is a natural progression that lines up with the previous two trilogies and ties the saga together. Imagine if Voldemort was killed off in Book 5 and Snape took his role for the final two. There would be no consistent overarching villain. They wouldn’t feel like legitimate series finales to the other 5.

Then they shouldn’t have made a Sequel Trilogy. The saga already had an ending. It was called RotJ. If the only way they could think of to make the ST feel connected to the first 6 movies was to bring Palpatine back, then they just shouldn’t have bothered, since they had nothing to contribute.

Except it DOES contribute. The PT is about his rise. The OT is about his fall. The ST is about stopping him from reclaiming the galaxy before it’s too late.

And no, Palps’ return does not ruin the OT. Anakin only did it to save Luke, and you’re somehow fine with it in Civil War, Logan and Infinity War.

Oh. You’re a r/moviescirclejerk user. That explains a lot.

I haven’t watched any of those three movies. I’m not a Marvel guy. But what you’re using here is Whataboutism. Just because the same issue might be present in those other movies doesn’t excuse the issue in the Sequel Trilogy. Other films having the same problem doesn’t make it okay.

Do you people not understand that everything is temporary? You really think the victory of the OT only matters if it lasts forever?

From Anakin’s perspective, yes, he was killing Palpatine to save Luke. But from a broader saga perspective, it marked the destruction of the Sith and the restoration of the Jedi. Changing that moment to being just a little inconvenient speed bump in Palpatine’s plans was stupid and undercutting of the original story.

No, it wasn’t. It allowed the new generation of heroes to prepare and defeat Palpatine once and for all, and allowed the Skywalkers’ legacy to live on. It also allowed more opportunities for character development.

And no, TFA is not a rehash of ANH. Yes, it takes similar elements, but that’s because it was necessary for the characters and story. For example, Starkiller is a way of showing that the FO is more advanced than the Empire.

Why are they so much more advanced? How did they get that way?

Do you not realize the Empire is capable of building planet-destroyers? They took the next step by strip-mining Starkiller and putting a cannon into it.

Why does the Republic not consider them a threat?

Except they do. Hence why they support the Resistance. It’s just that they refused to militarize because they became the Empire because they militarized in AotC. Remember, they had no military before AotC. They inferred that demilitarizing would make sure they never become another Empire.

And no, nothing that they recycled was “necessary” to the story. JJ made clear in the commentary and interviews for TFA that he wanted to bring all these familiar elements back (desert planet, new Death Star, Cantina, Stormtroopers, Rebels, old ship designs) because they were familiar to the audience, and would be registered by viewers as quintessential “Star Wars” imagery. It had nothing to do with the story or characters.

Except they do play a role. Jakku is a desert planet to visualize the hell Rey’s going through. Any story with any Imperial remnants were always going to have stormtroopers. The Resistance had no reason to improve the X-Wings.

Kylo killing Han is different from Vader killing Kenobi - whereas Vader killed Kenobi specifically because he was a Jedi, Kylo killed Han because he didn’t want to be conflicted anymore but it didn’t work and traumatized him >even more.

I will agree with you that the two deaths are different, since Obi-Wan’s death was far better. Han’s death was pointless and disrespectful. Having Han fail to save his son, then just get stabbed and falling (as a CGI corpse) down a bottomless pit was terrible. The screenwriters definitely intended the deaths to parallel each other, though. There’s no point denying that. Particularly in their placement in the story and in the way they affected the protagonist witnessing the death.

Except Han’s death WASN’T pointless. It was the thing that scarred Kylo for life and led up to his redemption in TROS. It was one of the things that allowed Rey to defeat him, alongside his injury.

The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.

By that logic, the Holdo maneuver is perfectly explained by the shield things or whatever in TLJ’s novelization. We’re judging the movies on their own merits.

Of course, any explanation for Palpatine’s return is better than the absolute nonsensical drivel the movie gives us. TRoS doesn’t even try or care. As bad as the canon explanation is, I’d rather take a bad explanation over no explanation. I’m doing the movie a favor by including out-of-movie sources that try to prop the movie up, since it really can’t stand on its own merits.

Except the movie DOES explain his return. He simply transferred his consciousness into a clone. It’s implied by “I have died before”, and the fact alone that he survived IMPLIES he’s discovered the secret to cheating death that only one has achieved.

That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.

Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.

Except what reason do we have to believe that Palpatine is gone for good this time? At least Dark Empire, for all its issues, bothered to explain how the heroes were able to prevent Palpatine’s return in future stories, ensuring that he could never come back to life. After TRoS, though, what is there to stop Palpatine from just possessing a new body somewhere else? Is he going to be like Sigma from Mega Man X and just keep coming back over and over again until it becomes comical?

Rey didn’t kill Palpatine in hatred. That’s the point. She even says as much earlier: “All you want for me is to hate. But I won’t. Not even you.”

You’re missing the point. Palpatine’s spirit is still out there. They just destroyed his body again, like in RotJ. So what give TRoS’s ending any more finality than RotJ’s ending?

How do you know Palps’ spirit is out there? The only reason he managed to survive ROTJ was by transferring his spirit into a clone. He had no other by the time of TROS.

Servii said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

SparkySywer said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

The ST is about stopping their respective returns.

In the end, what that turned out to mean was “Kill Palpatine again because we didn’t do it last time.”

It’s still different from the OT. The “similarities” between ANH and TFA are also different. I’d rather take a natural progression of the story than just making the ST about some random shit with Snoke and Kylo Ren or Thrawn or Maul or the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever.

Thrawn as the villain would have made perfect sense as a natural progression for the post-RotJ era. Having a new Imperial leader emerge in the power vacuum, one who isn’t a Sith, who takes control of the shattered Empire makes perfect sense and wouldn’t undermine the OT.

Palpatine being secretly alive for the whole 30 year gap and having his pickled Snokes in jars is out of left field and is not a natural progression. It renders the OT irrelevant, and makes the Skywalkers irrelevant in their own saga. The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.

Also, let’s not kid ourselves here. TFA is extremely derivative to the point of near plagiarism. The script was rushed out very quickly with the “soft reboot” approach in mind.

Having Thrawn would’ve made the ST disconnect from the PT and OT, unlike Palpatine. Stopping Palps’ return is a natural progression that lines up with the previous two trilogies and ties the saga together. Imagine if Voldemort was killed off in Book 5 and Snape took his role for the final two. There would be no consistent overarching villain. They wouldn’t feel like legitimate series finales to the other 5.

And no, Palps’ return isn’t out of left field. He has a desire for immortality, as established in Sith.

And no, Palps’ return does not ruin the OT. Anakin only did it to save Luke, and you’re somehow fine with it in Civil War, Logan and Infinity War.

And no, TFA is not a rehash of ANH. Yes, it takes similar elements, but that’s because it was necessary for the characters and story. For example, Starkiller is a way of showing that the FO is more advanced than the Empire. Kylo killing Han is different from Vader killing Kenobi - whereas Vader killed Kenobi specifically because he was a Jedi, Kylo killed Han because he didn’t want to be conflicted anymore but it didn’t work and traumatized him even more.

The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.

By that logic, the Holdo maneuver is perfectly explained by the shield things or whatever in TLJ’s novelization. We’re judging the movies on their own merits.

That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.

Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.

Except what reason do we have to believe that Palpatine is gone for good this time? At least Dark Empire, for all its issues, bothered to explain how the heroes were able to prevent Palpatine’s return in future stories, ensuring that he could never come back to life. After TRoS, though, what is there to stop Palpatine from just possessing a new body somewhere else? Is he going to be like Sigma from Mega Man X and just keep coming back over and over again until it becomes comical?

Rey didn’t kill Palpatine in hatred. That’s the point. She even says as much earlier: “All you want for me is to hate. But I won’t. Not even you.”

one of its pitfalls is that it goes into great depth on Grumpy Luke’s opinions, then doesn’t spend nearly as much time and detail rebutting them when it rejects them at the end.

That’s the point. Despite the flaws of the Jedi, Luke now believes they’re something worth fighting for.

I looked up “Bob Ducsay tlj edit” and realized Cap was talking about the theatrical version of TLJ. No, I don’t think TLJ is super-duper universal god-tier. Do you notice how I didn’t point out the flaws of the edits I didn’t address (aside from that, I disagree with trimming the Fathier chase)? Even then, I do have change ideas for TLJ (and TROS), but those can only be accomplished by rewrites.

SparkySywer said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

@Sparky Ah, yes, suggestions for helping achieve OP’s intention while also making sure he knows what he’s already changing is inherently wrong.

You’re arguing against the fundamental ideas of OP’s fanedit. 9 times out of 10, or probably more, you just disagree with the fanedit on a conceptual level. That’s fine. The fanedit is just not for you. OP understands what he’s changing fine. You often act like you have the supreme understanding of the ST, but you’re just one person with one particular subjective interpretation of these movies.

The best thing that could possibly happen (from your perspective) is you end up hijacking their creative project. In all likelihood, you’re just gonna end up arguing for the sake of arguing.

If you truly want to give suggestions for helping OP achieve their intention, give constructive criticism on the execution of their ideas. You often give destructive criticism of their creative purpose.

I’m probably contributing to the problem by feeding it and adding more off-topic comments to this post, though.

1. That’s the point! You guys defend the ST all the time. Why can’t I?

2. The edits I addressed remove some of the best things about TLJ, make them less meaningful, take away oomph and pointlessly add stuff that was cut out for a reason.

SparkySywer said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

The ST is about stopping their respective returns.

In the end, what that turned out to mean was “Kill Palpatine again because we didn’t do it last time.”

It’s still different from the OT. The “similarities” between ANH and TFA are also different. I’d rather take a natural progression of the story than just making the ST about some random shit with Snoke and Kylo Ren or Thrawn or Maul or the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever.

That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.

Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.

@Cap Where can I find that?

@Sparky Ah, yes, suggestions for helping achieve OP’s intention while also making sure he knows what he’s already changing is inherently wrong.

It’s the equivalent to al-Qaeda attacking the World Trade Center on 9/11. They’re hiding to avoid another 9/11, even from the FO that isn’t doing well. Remember, al-Qaeda only succeeded because the location of the WTC was public.

The Last Jedi is a film with great ideas and themes that it doesn’t communicate clearly.

They don’t explicitly communicate them to avoid needless spoonfeeding. Imagine if J.J. explicitly had Kylo go up to the camera and spoonfeed us that he was injured and bleeding and that was why he lost to Rey.

Removed Tali and all introductions to the bombing fleet personnel - it’s more important to focus on Paige in this sequence.

It’s there to add weight to when Tallie and the others — some of Poe’s friends — are killed in the ambush.

Removed random insert shots of stuff in Luke’s hut; the scene cuts directly to his robes being folded.

It’s an establishing shot telling us that we’re inside “some kind of building”.

Reinstated the deleted scene where Finn gets his jacket from Poe, with scene transition by poppasketti and pleasehello (Hal).

It’s redundant. We don’t need to push it down our throats that Finn has to fight for the cause.

Removed Leia slapping Poe. That’s not how a good leader would act, not to mention it’s a double-standard; imagine if Han slapped Rey for something in TFA.

The difference is that Poe caused mass genocide.

Reinstated the “Luke Has A Moment” deleted scene (Hal).

I also think it’s redundant. It can be already be inferred he’s mourning Han in the Falcon scene.

Force Skype conversations: dialogue extensively trimmed. Only one line is spoken in the first one, which breaks the connection; in the second they manage to hold a short conversation; by the third, they can communicate freely; in the fourth, they touch hands.

Scene 1 re-establishes Rey saw Han as a father figure, foreshadows Luke’s death and (re-)establishes Kylo’s relationship with Luke. Don’t remember too much about Scene 2.

Cut the Robot Chicken style joke where Luke tickles Rey’s hand.

It’s to show that Rey is naive, especially when it comes to the Force.

Removed reference to Luke cutting himself off from the Force. This is such a massive idea that the KOTOR games were completely centred on exploring it, and here it’s tossed out as a throwaway explanation for something that doesn’t even need one. Having the Force was never like having a GPS tracker on you in the OT, so why would we suddenly need a reason that Leia and Snoke haven’t been able to find Luke with the Force?

Luke doesn’t want to use the Force anymore. He thinks he, himself, will make things worse. It also explains how he didn’t sense Han’s death and the NR’s destruction.

Luke’s first lesson has been pruned to focus on his opinion that the Jedi’s legacy is failure, and so is his own.

If you’re referring to the lesson about the light, that was to show that the light would still exist, even if the Jedi die off. Luke believes the galaxy doesn’t NEED the Jedi.

No shirtless Kylo japes. He just happens to not be wearing a shirt now.

It’s to show that Rey is actually seeing Kylo and not just sensing him.

Luke deactivates his lightsaber immediately in the third flashback; he doesn’t realise Kylo is awake and hears it, . VFX shot courtesy of SparkySywer.

He keeps it on because he was ashamed of what he was doing. It’s like in ROTJ when he sees his hand after catching himself harming Vader.

Removed iron/spaceship gag, using a deleted scene restored by poppasketti (Hal).

Then how are you going to explain how or where they got FO uniforms?

Used poppasketti’s editing of the buildup to Snoke’s death using musical score from The Force Awakens (Hal).

Snoke’s hubris blinds him from realizing Kylo was gonna kill him.

Removed the awkward kiss between Finn and Rose. There aren’t any romantic undertones in their story arc so it comes out of nowhere, and Finn doesn’t actually look particularly pleased about it.

That’s the point. Finn is so caught up in Rey he doesn’t realize Rose loves him, and even he rejects her because she sexually harassed him, which also reinforces that he’s still into Rey, even WITH caring for the cause.

Cut the Broom Boy scene from the ending, instead irising out on the small spark of the Resistance that the whole film has been about saving as they bond in the Falcon.

This removes the point of the movie - Luke’s sacrifice inspires hope in times of hopelessness. This also removes foreshadowing for the galaxy rallying on Exegol.

Hal 9000 said:

Replace the score during the binary sunset in ANH with tracked music from ROTS in order to update it.

Do the same with the tracks from TFA, TLJ and TROS.

@bbghost Try doing the same with my other “bad edit” idea.

Replace the Imperial March with “How Bad Can I Be” from The Lorax.

My point is that they didn’t complete their goal of controlling all major systems.

Again, I was referring to the FO trying to take complete control. They didn’t complete it.

Servii said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

They couldn’t have. If they did, then it WOULD be a rehash of the OT.

I’ve got some bad news for you. It was too late. It was already a rehash. The whole ST is just a reboot disguised as a sequel.

I was referring to the premise that I mentioned. Whereas the OT is about their fall, the ST is about stopping their return.

And even in TROS, we know the FO isn’t doing so well - it’s what drives Kylo to hog Palpatine’s fleet to make the FO a true Empire.

TRoS is also very vague about the First Order’s level of power and reach. We hear Pryde say that the new fleet will make up for the loss of Starkiller Base, and Kylo makes some vague remark about how the fleet will finally make the FO into an Empire. But again, we never get a sense that the FO is struggling or losing its grip on the Galaxy. That’s just conjecture. We hear a fleeting mention of “free worlds” that will be forced to submit, but we never are shown or told anything about these worlds or their strength or quantity. And besides, during the OT, there existed worlds outside of the Empire’s control as well, but no one would argue that the Empire wasn’t the dominant, reigning power in those films.

Had the FO won in TLJ, then they would’ve become a true Empire.

They couldn’t have. If they did, then it WOULD be a rehash of the OT. And even in TROS, we know the FO isn’t doing so well - it’s what drives Kylo to hog Palpatine’s fleet to make the FO a true Empire.

REY: The First Order will control all the major systems within weeks.

Simply, we don’t know whether it was complete or not. We’re never told or shown either way.

The crawl and Rey’s discussion with Luke say otherwise.

But the takeover wasn’t complete. That’s the point.

@Servii Imagine ignoring everything else in my comment.

@act on instinct When does ANH establish that?

And yet they still stop that anyways, with Luke inspiring the galaxy, with the FO not doing so well and being in need of becoming a new Empire, and with the galaxy working together and defeating them in TROS.

Servii said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

The ST is about stopping their respective returns.

Except they didn’t stop them. Canonically, Palpatine inhabited his new body on Exegol almost immediately after his death in RotJ. Palpatine was still alive for that entire 30-year gap, and in those 30 years, he successfully managed to cause the destruction of the Republic and the Jedi Order again, and turn a Skywalker to the Dark Side again.

There was no preventing involved. Palpatine was still actively shaping galactic events for all that time post-RotJ. RotJ’s victory was made completely hollow and illusory. Even the title “Return of the Jedi” doesn’t make sense anymore. The Jedi failed to return.

If the Sequel Trilogy had involved some Dark Side plot to resurrect Palpatine by pulling his spirit back from the netherworld of the Force, and our heroes had to prevent this and make sure Palpatine stayed dead, then that would count as stopping his return. But that’s not what happened. RotJ was just a tiny setback to Palpatine.

And of course, they didn’t prevent the Empire’s return, either. The Empire was back to full power, so there was nothing left to prevent.

I would have been fully aboard with the more optimistic ST that you’re describing. One where the heroes fight to protect and maintain the peace they had built as they’re confronted with resurgent threats. We could have seen how Luke’s Jedi Order and the New Republic are put to the test against many of the same problems faced by the Old Republic and Jedi, all while struggling to prevent a lapse back into authoritarianism. We could have seen the Skywalker family struggling to stay together amidst these events, and seen Luke and Leia working to keep the new generation from repeating the mistakes of the past and falling to the Dark Side. That’s a Sequel Trilogy I would have liked to see. Instead, all of that interesting story basically happened offscreen before TFA, with the heroes having failed at everything they set out to do.

What I mean is that they didn’t fully take over the galaxy. They stopped the Empire and Palpatine before they even got to complete their takeover. And no, the First Order doesn’t rule the galaxy in TLJ, if you’re thinking of “The First Order reigns”. The crawl mentions Snoke is sending his legions to seize military control of the galaxy, and Rey herself admits that their takeover is only complete within weeks, implying it isn’t finished.

? I’m just pointing out you’re wrong.